Baseball is a favorite American pastime and training begins at a very young age. The most difficult aspect of the game is hitting the baseball so that it is projected to a desired distance and direction. To perfect this skill, people young and old will partake in batting practice. Batting practice is often conducted in large open fields or batting cages. People travel to these practice areas with all of their equipment including baseballs, bats, helmets, gloves and most importantly baseball tees. Carrying all of this equipment to a car, unloading it onto a field of play, setting it up, and then re-loading it back into the car after practice is tiring and cumbersome. To ease this burden, some of the equipment is placed into a large bags, and other pieces of equipment are carried or dragged onto the field. The bags are heavy and awkward to carry.
During the set up process the batting tee is assembled and placed into position. Once the batting tee is set up, people load one baseball at a time on top of the tee before taking a swing at it with their baseball bat. Afterwards, they must place another ball on top of the tee before taking another swing. This process is repeated throughout the practice session. This is very distracting and takes away time and energy from improving a person's batting skill.
Many batting tees are known including, for example, the tee disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,869. The tee comprises a base and an upstanding column carried by the base and having means for supporting a ball on such column. The column and base are made of a yieldable resilient material and are constructed to enable the column to be struck by a ball bat and easily knocked down with the column and bat remaining intact and once knocked down enabling the base and the major portion of the column to be easily flattened upon applying compressive forces thereagainst to thereby assure a person falling thereagainst will be free of injury.
Another such device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,176,838 which provides, for example, a batting baseball tee comprised of a self-righting, semi-spherical weighted bottom portion with an axially upstanding post removably fixed thereto, terminating at its upper end with an inverted conical helical spring attached thereto for the reception of a ball forming a batting target.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,227,691 provides, for example, a planar base adapted to rest on the ground, and having a plurality of holes therein and being a representation of a baseball home plate, an elongate, length-adjustable, telescoping member, such member including an elongate pipe being externally threaded at one end thereof, such one end of the pipe being extendable through any one of the holes in the base; and a disc having an internally threaded central hole for receipt of one end of the pipe for removably connecting the telescoping member to any one of the holes in the base, the member supporting a ball above the selected hole in the base.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,383,686 provides, for example, a batting tee comprising a base including an upper and lower base member held in substantially parallel spaced relation relative to each other by a first set of spacers disposed therebetween wherein the upper and lower base member each comprises a first and second base element normally disposed in coplanar relation relative to each other, a second set of spacers attached to the lower surface of the lower base member to support the batting tee above the ground, a substantially vertical adjustable tee member including an outer interconnecting element having an upper and lower tee element extending from opposite ends thereof, a flexible ball receiving element is coupled to the upper portion of the upper tee element, a plurality of corresponding apertures comprising a predetermined pattern are formed in the upper and lower base members to selectively receive the lower tee element thereinto vary the ball hitting position relative to the batting tee wherein the predetermined pattern comprises at least two pair of substantially parallel rows of apertures to permit the batter to select one of at least three batting positions relative to the batting tee.
Several other U.S. patents disclose a variety of batting tee designs. While they provide interesting designs there leaves much room for improvement. It is desirable to have a batting tee which requires no assembly. It is also desirable to have an easy way to transport equipment such as baseballs, bats etc. onto a playing field at one time. It is yet another desirable feature to have a baseball tee which does not require re-loading of a baseball or softball after every hit.